AOSC662

The vulnerability and resilience of ecosystems are dependent on phenomena that link the cycling of water, nutrients and other biogeochemically active elements. Understanding the perturbations in these cycles that trigger impacts on ecosystem spatiotemporal characteristics is a challenge that generally transcends disciplinary and geographical boundaries, and is key to sustaining the diversity of life on Earth. This course on ecohydrology focuses on the study of hydrologically-controlled ecosystems, e.g. systems in which either excess and/or deficit of water and nutrients are determinants of its structure and function. Such systems have complex dynamic characteristics that depend on many interrelated links between climate, soil and vegetation.